After really enjoying myself, spending the day on the TRF stand at London Excel on Friday 18th feb.It dawned on me how many older lapsed members came along for a chat, One of these guy's actually had a lot to do with the Trf back in the 70's he even remembered printing the catalogues by hand, having to turn the handle hundreds of time.Made me wonder why aren't we (the TRF), Working harder to retain members instead of just ploughing money into new memberships?. Perhaps we should be offering A discount after every 5 years or so?.Its got to be better to retain members as well as sign up new ones.Food for thought I suppose?.

IIRC there was some sort of provision made for retaining older members who maybe didn't ride any more, but still had huge knowledge of what lanes had been ridden when. I don't know if it was ever actioned, though.

One of the biggest problems the TRF has faced is the poor communication between the generations...in many groups there was an old boy who held all the records, then he got old and stopped coming on so many rides, then he got old and stopped coming to meetings and then someone heard he'd died.

So, round to his house goes someone who has drawn the short straw to try to get the records, only to be told that his widow threw all his old motorbike rubbish into a skip the week before.

And if this old boy hadn't been so stand offish at the younger members on their enduro type bikes and had shared his wealth of knowledge with them and encouraged them to show an interest in the ROW stuff rather than them just riding, the lanes, then the TRF and those groups would have been stronger for it.

When I joined I was drip fed the maps over a 6mth to a year period as the old duffer didn't want to cough up the info and would rather restrict my knowledge, than encourage me to take an interest. In the run up to crow and nerc us keen younger riders were basically told we didn't know what we were talking about and the old guys had it in hand. Cheers. Look how that panned out.

the older members are being discounted as having done it all wrong, being labelled as being stuck in the muds and argumentative because they won't roll over and accept that new is great and better than old. There is a middle ground

no one likes change ........change management takes skill, knowledge and patience....something some of the Directors don't have.

Propaganda, bribery, ridicule and eventually isolation are the order of the day for those older members that do not see the New way quite as they are required to.

yes we should be encouraging our older members thats why when i was a director i brought in automatic life membership for members with 25 years continuous service.

And if this old boy hadn't been so stand offish at the younger members on their enduro type bikes and had shared his wealth of knowledge with them and encouraged them to show an interest in the ROW stuff rather than them just riding, the lanes, then the TRF and those groups would have been stronger for it.

When I joined I was drip fed the maps over a 6mth to a year period as the old duffer didn't want to cough up the info and would rather restrict my knowledge, than encourage me to take an interest. In the run up to crow and nerc us keen younger riders were basically told we didn't know what we were talking about and the old guys had it in hand. Cheers. Look how that panned out.

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If I recall what actually happened in the run up the NERC it was that the Chairman of the TRF was lied to to his face by the then Secretary of State for DEFRA. This led him to tell us there was no need to submit any more DMMOs or canvas our MPs (I had offered to produce all the campaign material for nothing).

We then had to lobby to get the Lords to modify the NERC Act...which they didn't do (unsurprisingly).

Folks did what they did in the light of the knowledge and the belief in truth as it was held back then.

That's life, get used to it 'cos it will be the same for you, try to learn from the mistakes of the past and try harder not to replicate them.

Actually we really do need to look up those folk who rode 'way back when' because we need their reminiscences to disprove the lies of the antis and to prove that there were more than just half a dozen of us riding the routes.

TTFN

Hugh.

_________________Please note that I am not a National TRF Officer, any views expressed are my own and may not be in accordance with any official policy.

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